Happiness, Positivism and Chemical Locchas of the mind

'Lagey Raho Munnabhai' is a laugh riot! But more than that - it is starkingly positive. Its important to have such movies that just take us back to the light hearted moments, reminding you to smile. [An excellent review here by Pratiksha].
People waste away too many precious hours of their lives worrying, sulking about their money, their work-loads, performance appraisals, troubled relationships and global warming and nuke attacks! There are loads of better things to be happy about, isn't it?

(Its 8 pm and I'm just done with my office-work for today. But still writing this while sitting at my desk - 'cos one should always find time for doing things that one likes :-))

Everyone likes to be happy. But that makes me wonder, if its so good, why wouldn't people be that way all the time? What keeps people away from being happy within themselves?

Maybe:

• There are anti-elements everywhere that schemingly obstruct happiness. Situations, other people, destiny...
• Man remains a dissatisfied creature (generally speaking) or it's like saying - 'Happiness is relative'. People compare their own well-being with their immediate counterparts and that brings unhappiness (even if they themselves are much well-in-place)
• A lot of people, (yes - a lot), when faced with some adverse situation, send their rational minds on a long coffee break and get taken over by all negative thoughts. They find 'adverse situations' a perfect alibi to convince themselves why they must be unhappy in life!

Can one stop this chemical loccha in the mind? Yeah, of course! I feel if one 'chooses' to be happy, one would feel so - no matter what! And I say that by experience.

What, me worry?

I do not go the extra mile to be nice and friendly to the people around me. It comes from within. When I do something that is rightfully good, its because I feel so - and not to score my brownie points with God. When I am friendly and helpful to someone - its because I get an inner satisfaction doing that. Of course there are times when things do not go as you want. But thats not the time to get mad. Stupid and senseless behaviour does not enrage me, but I'm amused and often hopeful that the person does get some sense in his/her beautiful mind.When people with IQ half that of mine do things that are in all probablity, anger-spawning, I behave otherwise. Unruffled - its me.

I do not wish to change the world. (I like the way it is - 'Imperfect') I do not dream to become like Superman, wear a mask with spare underwear on top of my pants and pretend to save the world! (though I wish I had the ability to.... ;-))

But seriously speaking, I just wish the world be a much happier place, much simpler and with lesser pretensions. Movies like 'Lagey Raho..' remind you of that time-to-time.

I watched 'Lagey Raho..' for the 2nd time yesterday, and I stil have a contented smile on my face. I feel like writing a joy song right-away but can't find a word at hand that rhymes with 'yapa-dipee-dooo'!

:-)

PS: Probably one of my most confused posts ever. But that's what I call a system-dump of my thoughts.

PS 2: Laughter is the best medicine. Even if you are not sick....

Pandora in Paris

4:30 am is not a time of the day when your alarm screams below ur pillow and you feel grateful to the tiny appliance for having done the honours of waking you up. Just like any normal being, I felt like throwing it off to the other corner of the room! But this was not one of 'those' days. It was the day of the Paris trip on a Saturday morning, and I darn well wasn't going to miss my money spent on the flight booking. So there I got up and in 2 hours was there at the Stuttgart airport - all sleepy-eyed but ready to take the plunge to... PARIS!

Charles de Gaulle Airport does a great job of confusing the hell out of it's unsuspecting passengers. Its huge, its a whole city out there with isolated gigantic terminals spread miles from each other! But we were lucky to get out of there without wasting much time - and soon we were on the RER that took us bang-on to the center of the city.

Every other person you see on the Paris streets is a tourist - and if you commit the fallacy of asking them for directions, you might be bombarded with any random language on earth. However, French in all broken avtaars seemed to rule the roost. I recalled my shabbily taken French beginner's course back in B-school, and it guiltfully reminded me of the apparent benefits of a well-learnt foreign lingo. Hmmm.... I should've known earlier...

The mother of all museums - The Louvre
The very place where Dan Brown's masterpiece begins was something to watch out for. Though the whole detailed visit of the museum would require a couple of days, we rushed through that in 3 hours - call it 'Desi paisa-wasooli' 'cos we had many other places to cover in only 2 days!

At the museum, among the thousands of first-time tourists with amused eyes, there were species of a different kind. Art enthusiasts, historians, archeologists, numismatists, all with a penchant for art that would've given Robert Langdon a serious complex.

The Mona Lisa was superb, to say the least! Then we were at the glass pyramid outside that has so frequent mentions in the cult book. The feeling was of rememberances and relating the things we saw to the things we had read in 'The Da Vinci Code'. Makes me think - 'yeah, maybe we wouldn't have enjoyed seeing this museum so much had it not been for Dan Brown's book.... '

Eiffel Tower at night is a marvel! Its a magic done in lights which can be visible from miles away.We decided to enjoy the visual brilliance there and go up its canopy the during the daytime the next day. The frustating wait of 2-3 hours for a 20 odd mins stay up at the top can get to ones nerves, but we still waited, ever-expectant. The view from the top was MIND-BLOWING! Sriram, my buddy, managed to pay a visit to the loo up there (all of 300 mts height) and he proudly took home a memory of pissing at the highest point of Paris! :-)

There were quite a few other great places that we saw. The best part was our open-air tour bus that took us around town with its 8-language Audio tour (who cared about the other 7 languages anyway :-)). Saw the Moulin Rouge Cabaret Theatre from the outside - the same place where the Nicole Kidman musical was shot. As our open air bus passed through that street (Boulevard de Clichy), the unending array of Sex shops and Massage Parlors became visible - the most conspicuous being the Museum of Eroticism (Musee de l'Erotisme). Enough to give the Indian moral police a massive heart attack!

What I'd surely remember were the Place de la Concorde, Champs-Elysées, Chapel at Notre Dame and the Opera. Places like Château de Versailles and Paris Disneyland were reluctantly skipped - so really 2 days are not enough! A good few hours were spent meandering through the streets and boulevards which were tastefully lined up with Cafes and bistros on both sides of the pavement, serving the choiciest of French wine. Couples - ah, they were all over the place! (and their hands too were all over the place... lolz... :-) )

2 days of hustled tourism, of overdoses in medevial history, of beauty totally man-made, of boulevards, palaces, chapels and top-views, of our aching legs but contented eyes - Paris trip is something wouldn't dilute so easily from the mind. All in all, such an eventful trip surely deserves a longer write-up but these are the times of brevity and rushed schedules.

Paris is a complex city. It breathes and lives art. It has massive structures that take you back to the medevial times, it has a underground metro and a sewage system that beats almost every other city hands down, it has a major migrant population giving an extremely cosmopolitian look, its congested yet beautiful, rushy yet sophisticated, pompous yet pleasurable. This city truly makes romantics out of skeptics with its alluring history and charming modern-day buzz.

It's the city of Love.

At the Louvre's Glass Pyramid


See the shadow of the Eiffel?


Another view of the Siene. (and the adjoining Football field)


The Moulin Rouge

World Cup Finals - 9 July 2006 (Stuttgart)

If you are really reading this out of your own preference, well I'll just risk asking you to imagine for once... please.... :-)

Imagine being invited to the best gourmet party in the city, but when you reach there you meet smartly dressed waiters picking up the dishes and you wonder how those starters would've tasted and how tempting were the desserts you missed.

Or, imagine going to the best strip-club in town, but so late that you only find the babes fully clad, fully packed up, and ready to leave for the day... (ok, ok, don't get me wrong - I'm just being too imaginative...)

Well, thats how the initial feeling was, on landing in Deutchesland on the day of the final. For 4 months I was waiting for the visa to come through and prayed like hell that I reached at the time of the World cup. Finally the day arrived, but only when the World cup got over - I reached there on the day of the finals! There was a feeling of disappointment, almost surreal, a feeling of having missed the bus - the bus to the greatest event in 4 years!

But i could call that premature despair, as I soon realized things were not so bad...

After all:
- I got to watch the final at the open-air screen amongst thousands of screaming fans in Stuttgart, and drowned in the post-match celebrations.
- I actually got to view almost all the matches in the World cup back home in India. The timings were convenient enough for me to go back home after office-hours and catch them live on television. My friends who had moved to Germany earlier found it really difficult to catch up with the games, especially the first match everyday, simply because they were stuck up in office.

Reached Stuttgart on Sunday morning and having done with the luggage and freshening up - by evening was all ready to go to the city-center at the 'Fan Fest'. The atmosphere was MIND-BLOWING!

When you see around all things that you've been waiting for all this long, at that time you don't care about your possible jet-lag, nor your impending sleep and the aching body, nor worry about reporting at office the next day-Monday! You just shut up and enjoy the show! And I did!



And I'm talking about a massive football crazy crowd jumping, shouting and cheering. There were fans from Italia & France of course, and also people from different nationalities all flocked together - there were thousands! The feeling was great to watch the match on giant open-air screens, the greatest event of the world - in the same country where it was all happening!

(I'd missed the 3rd place match the previous day - been on the flight. But was told that when Germany won, the whole of Stuttgart was on the streets! )

When France scored, one side of the supporters went mad. When both sides missed chances, they despaired. When Zidane headbutted Materazzi, everyone put their hands up in shock! And finally when Italy won, it was frenzy all around. Then the festivities continued late till night...

Samba for Brazil!


We cheered for Italia!



With so much beer flowing around... people do need to piss, don't they?


PS: I'm a total sucker for football. Its my drug of choice!